Possibly Jane Rule’s best known novel, The Desert of the Heart is the story of a free spirited woman falling for a repressed older woman. Evelyn Hall is taking respite at a ranch for women as she seeks a divorce after years of marriage. Written in 1964, it serves as a fascinating snapshot into the … Read more
Strange Fruit is mainly an interracial love story set in a Georgia town. It also has a minor storyline involving an implied romantic attachment between two women. Laura Deen, Tracy Deen’s college-educated sister, is a young sculptor and writer who has formed an intense bond with Jane Hardy, an older, unmarried schoolteacher. Laura says she … Read more
First published in 1928, this timeless portrayal of lesbian love is now a classic. The thinly disguised story of Hall’s own life, it was banned outright upon publication and almost ruined her literary career. Genre: Award Winner; Checklist by Marion Zimmer Bradley; Fiction; Grier Rated; Pulp Comments Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness (1928) is … Read more
Tottie: A Tale of the 60s by Sarah Aldridge is a 1975 lesbian romance set against the social upheaval of the 1960s. Connie, a young lawyer navigating the professional barriers placed in front of women, is engaged to be married when she meets Tottie, a young woman who has fled her conservative family and found … Read more
The Latecomer by Sarah Aldridge is a 1974 lesbian romance and a landmark in the history of lesbian publishing: it was the first title issued by Naiad Press, the pioneering lesbian publishing house co-founded by Aldridge’s partner Anyda Marchant and Muriel Crawford. The novel follows Philippa, returning by ship from Europe, whose life is upended … Read more
All True Lovers by Sarah Aldridge is a 1978 lesbian romance set against the backdrop of the Great Depression, following two young women as they find each other and navigate the obstacles that life and society place in their path. The novel was published by Naiad Press and reissued multiple times through the 1980s and … Read more
We, Too, Must Love is the 1958 sequel to We Walk Alone, written by Ann Aldrich, the pen name of Marijane Meaker. Written in direct response to the hundreds of letters Aldrich received after We Walk Alone‘s publication, the book surveys lesbian subcultures in and around New York City, examining class distinctions, social cliques (the … Read more
We Walk Alone by Ann Aldrich (a pseudonym of Marijane Meaker) is a groundbreaking 1955 work of non-fiction pulp that documented lesbian life in Greenwich Village, drawing on the author’s own experience as a lesbian. Part sociological survey, part first-person reportage, the book addressed its subject at a time when almost no mainstream publishing did … Read more
Bessie by Chris Albertson is a biography of Bessie Smith, the blues singer known as the Empress of the Blues, who was the highest-paid African-American performer of the 1920s. Drawing on extensive interviews with Smith’s relatives, friends, and associates — including Ruby Walker Smith, a niece by marriage who toured with her for over a … Read more
The Odd Kind by Arthur Adlon is a lesbian pulp novel set in the world of high-fashion modelling, first published in 1961. The story centres on La Modena, a model who has reinvented herself from humble origins, and Pam Elliott, another model drawn between desire for a woman and the material rewards a wealthy man … Read more